Some Time Warner customers will see rate increase March 1

About one in every three Time Warner Cable subscribers locally will see their television fees go up March 1.

The average rate increase will be about 2.6 percent, but a majority of Western New York customers won’t be affected, since about two-thirds of them are billed for TV service as part of promotional packages, according to Joli Plucknette-Farmen, Time Warner Cable’s Western New York communications manager. Rates for telephone and Internet service will be unchanged.

“The new prices reflect dramatically higher costs charged by programmers – especially for local broadcast channels and sports programming,” she added. “In recent years, the cost of cable programming has grown at double the pace of the price of our TV services.”

DirecTV and the Dish Network also have increased their rates for TV service since the beginning of the year.